The Hurro-Urartian Substratum in Kurdish (1)

The toponyms are generally conservative and give insight to the human history of the region when it comes to possible linguistic influnce or shifts. 

It has long been shown by scholars that significant portion of Kurdish toponymy originates from Hurro-Urartian; examples are ''Barzani'' which was name of a Hurrian god; or Kurdish clan names ''Zibari'' from ''Sippar'', ''Musuri'' from ''Musri'', or name of ''Ziwiya'' from ''Zibiya'' ( capital of Hurro-Urartian kingdom of Manna, south of lake Urmia), name vally of ''Harir'' from ''Kiruri'', and dozens other place names and hydronyms such as Xabur, Van, etc. To these also must be added the name of 'Kurdistan' itself in Kurdish (endonym), i.e. ''Kurdawari'','' awari'' being the Hurrian word meaning ''land, field''.
Name of the Kurdish village ''Roboski'' is a remnamt of the name ''Eribuski'', the golden eagle of Teshup.

But so far there has been no effort to look into Kurdish vocabulary to analysis thousands of words with no etymology relating them to Iranic (IE), Arabic (Semitic)  or Turkic (Altaic), but with clear Hurro-Urartian cognates.


(See also Urartian morphology and Kurdish)